Monday, June 20, 2011

Tremont Tap House

How much does it cost to park a jet at Burke Lakefront Airport (BLA)? Quick - get a number in your head. Think of what it actually takes to own a jet - the money, the power, the fame that a member of the jet set would have. Quite a bit, no? Think of whether someone willing to splash out a few million on a jet would think twice about a fee of $1,000 a day, or $5,000 a day. Would such numbers even bother then? Do these numbers change your estimate?

Whatever your number is, cut it in half.

Then cut it in half again.

Then again.

Where are you now? $5,000? $500? $50?

Lower.

It costs $5 per day to park a jet for 24 hours at BLA. That is not a typo. Five dollars.

How much for a car, then? Guess quickly, because the answer is $6. Yes - it costs $1 more per day to park a car at BLA than a jet, and then we wonder why BLA is losing $1 MILLION per year. It's because we feel bad for all of those jet owners who have spent all of their millions on private planes and can't afford parking fees, so we're stuck with their bills. Perhaps in the future we should be asking them to pay for us to park for free in their lots at their Cavs or Tribe or Browns games, or at their casinos.

This came up over dinner at the Tremont Tap House, on a beautiful early summer night on their porch. The midges were floating through the air around the tables and dogs, brought to support an APL fundraiser, were straining against short leashes tied to owners' chairs, tails and tongues wagging. A pretty blonde had a small dog on her lap and was feeding it from her plate, matching it bite-for-bite. The dog licked her fingers greedily as she laughed with a brunette. I thought: I would never date somebody who sat with a dog on her lap at a table. If she fed the dog like that on a date, I would probably give her a withering look and not talk to her for the remainder of the evening, and maybe even sneak inside, pay for my half of the meal, then slip out the back. Dogs, you see, are animals, not people, no matter what SWPLs might think.

I would certainly never feed them a burger from the Tap House. Oh, no. These burgers used to be not so good - or maybe it was that the only time I had ever had one, it was during a Cavs loss a year or so ago. Events, of course, change perceptions. On Wednesday, June 15, 2011, we were still exuberant over the Mavs' victory, and that may have changed my taste buds, but I don't think so.

The Tap House burger served that night was nearly perfect. The bun - soft, lightly toasted, and tasting buttered and fresh - sandwiched a patty ordered medium and served well-done; however, this ended up not detracting from its juiciness and vigor, and I ended up appreciating the charred taste even more. The lettuce and tomato rested atop bacon and a slice of aged cheddar, the latter of which overwhelmed the other ingredients out of proportion to its volume. This, of course, is not a bad thing. Most cheese chosen for burgers tend to be weaker than cheese chosen to eat on its own, letting the meat completely dominate everything else. Here, a better, stronger cheese could not have been had; I can still feel the way it pushed against the roof of my mouth and then dissolved into fragments, jostling against the meat and bread to get to my taste buds. The single slice of sweet pickle, which Scarlet disdained, was my only other complaint; I would have put two or three on top. Reasonably good fries and a dog-themed beer rounded out an exceptional happy hour meal.

And, at happy hour prices, you can get it all for just two times what it would cost to park a Lear and a Maybach at BLA.

“I see a man taking a break in his highly structured life, reading a newspaper in the park, or a young man sitting on a curb eating a sandwich and reading a book, taking the moment for himself. I celebrate these moments in bronze.” J. Steward Johnson, Jr.